Modern Mining March 2019

PRODUCT News

Test-work on Vesconite polymer sliding wear plates has shown promising results on a crawler drill that is employed at a zinc project in South Africa’s Northern Cape. Sliding wear plates prove themselves on drill rig The wear plates were installed on the rotary head slide of a drill that carries out exploration drilling at the mine that is to exploit one of the largest zinc orebodies in the world.

recommendations and real-time decision- making now available to on-site engineers. Inmarsat’s solution collects data from a range of industry standard sensors via edge connectivity such as LoRaWAN (Long Range Wide Area Network), before it is transferred across Inmarsat’s L-band satellite network to a single cloud dashboard. This enables mining companies and national regulators to gain a comprehensive view of the status of their dams with granular metrics such as pond elevation, piezometric pressures, inclinometer readings and weather con- ditions displayed in one place, no matter have lasted more than twice as long as the OEM nylon wear pads with more than 1 300 hours of operation to date. They will continue to be used and the wear life will be closely monitored in comparison with the nylon OEM parts. The wear life will be proved on the 10 wear plate assemblies comprising 20 sepa- rate wear plates on the crawler drill. On a separate application on the crawler drill, Vesconite wear plates have also been employed on the boom slide. This is the rear part of the crawler drill; it is moved and adjusted to the drilling height, and provides stability to the drill. This boom moves roughly six times a day, so the wear is not as considerable as that on the rotary head slide. However, with the previously-installed OEM nylon slides lasting 1 000 hours on this applica- tion, there was still a need to improve the lifespan of these slides. The OEM equipment supplier hopes that the Vesconite will last much longer than the 1 000 hours of the OEM material. Phillip de Villiers, Vesconite, tel (+27 11) 616-1111, e-mail: phillip@vesconite.com

The wear plates were installed on the rotary head slide of the crawler drill.

improved safety standards and will sup- port regulatory compliance, offering a new approach to the way tailings dams are cur- rently audited and managed. Mine tailings audits are typically carried out at infrequent intervals, with employees and third-party consultants making long distance trips to collect data and audit the status of the dam. The solution makes data available between site visits to any accredited users, anywhere in theworld.Thismeans that current, on-site auditing practices can now be supplemented with a remote, customis- able, ‘daily management cycle’, with auditor The rotary head moves the drill into the ground for deeper and shallower drilling. It alsomoves to allow the drill to be changed. Since the rotary head moves approxi- mately 120 times a day, wear on the slides was considerable, and the original equip- ment manufacturer (OEM)’s nylon wear pads only lasted 500 hours. As a result, the OEM crawler drill sup- plier involved in the zinc project sought a solution to extend the life of its wear pads and investigated other more wear- resistant materials that could cope with highly-abrasive materials such as chrome and silica that come in contact with the pads. Vesconite Bearings technical repre- sentative Phillip de Villiers recommended the use of Vesconite in the application to improve the total wear life of the slides. The OEM equipment supplier reports that the Vesconite polymer wear plates

Tailings dammonitoring service introduced Inmarsat, a world leader in global mobile satellite communications, is joining forces with Knight Piésold UK to deliver highly accurate tailings dam monitoring, analysis and real-time management capabilities for the mining industry.

The collaboration agreement with Knight Piésold UK, a member of the interna- tional geotechnical, tailings management and engineering consulting group, will combine Inmarsat’s satellite-enabled IoT (Internet of Things) solution, with Knight Piésold’s industry-leading consultancy. This will enable smarter decision making,

where the mine is located. Inmarsat, website: www.inmarsat.com

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56  MODERN MINING  March 2019